9O Success with Small Fruits. 



understanding that he would lose his position if he permitted moisture 

 to fail even for half a day. 



In about two weeks, with good management, the plants will fill the 

 pots with roots, which so interlace as to hold the ball of earth compactly 

 together during transportation. This ball of earth, with the roots, sepa- 

 rates readily from the pot, and the plant, thus sustained, could be shipped 

 around the world if kept from drying out and the foliage protected from the 

 effects of alternate heat and cold. The agricultural editor of the New York 

 Weekly Times writes me that the potted plants are worth their increased 

 cost, if for no other reason, because they are so easily planted in hot 

 weather. 



The chief advantage of summer planting lies in the fact that we obtain 

 a good crop the following season, while plants set out in spring should not 



be permitted to bear at all 

 the same year. If we discover 

 in May or June that our supply 

 is insufficient, or that some new 

 varieties offer us paradisaical 

 flavors, we can set out the 



A Potted Plant. plants in the summer or autumn 



of the same year, and within 



eight or ten months gather the fruits of our labors. If the season is 

 somewhat showery, or if one is willing to take the trouble to water and 

 shade the young plants, ordinary layers that is, plants that have grown 

 naturally in the open ground will answer almost as well as those that 

 have been rooted in pots. The fact that they do not cost half as much is- 

 also in their favor. 



The disposition to plant in summer or autumn is steadily increasing, 

 and the following reasons are good and substantial ones for the practice. 

 In our gardens and fields there are many crops that mature in July, 

 August and September. The cultivation of these crops has probably left 

 the ground mellow, and in good condition for strawberries. Instead of 

 leaving this land idle, or a place for weeds to grow and seed, it can be 

 deeply forked or plowed, and enriched, as has been explained. Even in 

 July, potted plants may be bought, and unless the ground is full of the 

 larvae of the June beetle, or the plants are treated with utter neglect, not 

 one in a hundred will fail. Say the plants cost us two and a half cents 

 each, by the time they are planted, instead of one-half to one cent as in 

 the spring, is there not a prospect of an equal or larger profit ? A potted 

 plant set out in summer or early autumn, and allowed to make no runners, 



